Es­cap­ing a gi­ant alien squid on the moon, hood­wink­ing a dis­grun­tled ghost, win­ning a chut­ney cham­pi­onship, and a scor­pi­on pep­per com­pe­ti­tion. These are some of the wild sto­ries tum­bling from the minds of our na­tion’s chil­dren and in­clud­ed in the Chil­dren’s Sto­ry and Colour­ing Book 10.

The sto­ry and colour­ing book is the lat­est an­thol­o­gy in the col­lec­tion of sto­ries cre­at­ed by chil­dren dur­ing the Bo­cas Chil­dren’s Sto­ry­telling Car­a­van in 2024. Twen­ty orig­i­nal sto­ries were cre­at­ed by chil­dren from Ce­dros, Matu­ra, Saly­bia, De­ba, Princess Town, Cou­va, Port-of-Spain, To­ba­go, Moru­ga, and Ari­ma, as part of the Bo­cas Lit Fest’s long-stand­ing tra­di­tion of in­spir­ing and de­vel­op­ing new gen­er­a­tions of read­ers and writ­ers.

Fol­low­ing an an­i­mat­ed sto­ry­telling sea­son fea­tur­ing pro­fes­sion­al sto­ry­tellers such as Mary Cuffy, Ce­cil­ia Salazar, Alake Pil­grim, Rubadiri Vic­tor, Theodo­ra Ulerie, Lalonde Ochoa, and Ly­lah Per­sad, chil­dren were giv­en a sto­ry ti­tle as a prompt, en­cour­ag­ing them to brain­storm ideas for a sto­ry dur­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive work­shop. These ideas were then ex­pand­ed and de­vel­oped in­to full sto­ries and pub­lished to­geth­er as an an­thol­o­gy, com­plete with orig­i­nal il­lus­tra­tions.

“A fun­da­men­tal fea­ture of the chil­dren’s pro­gramme is to ac­tive­ly fos­ter and pro­mote a new gen­er­a­tion of read­ers and writ­ers,” ex­plains Melv­ina Haz­ard, Chil­dren’s Pro­gramme Man­ag­er at Bo­cas Lit Fest. “It’s one thing to en­ter­tain and in­spire chil­dren about the mag­ic and pow­er of read­ing and lis­ten­ing to sto­ries. We know read­ing en­cour­ages em­pa­thy, crit­i­cal think­ing, cre­ativ­i­ty and el­e­vat­ed so­cial and cog­ni­tive skills. By go­ing fur­ther to teach and work with chil­dren to cre­ate their own sto­ries, we are help­ing to build a new cat­a­logue of sto­ries by chil­dren for chil­dren.”

The book was of­fi­cial­ly launched dur­ing the Bo­cas Lit Fest’s an­nu­al fes­ti­val on Sat­ur­day, May 2 2026, at NALIS’ Chil­dren’s Li­brary. The launch event, ti­tled Sto­ries from The Car­a­van, was at­tend­ed by scores of chil­dren and their fam­i­lies who came to cel­e­brate and sup­port the young writ­ers’ achieve­ment.

Chil­dren from Debe, Princess Town, Ari­ma, Moru­ga, and Port-of-Spain re­ceived their copies of Book 10, saw with de­light their names in print for the first time, and read their sto­ries out loud to all in at­ten­dance. “It was very re­ward­ing wit­ness­ing sheer joy and pride on the faces of these chil­dren as they held and read from Book 10 and saw their ideas pre­sent­ed in print­ed words and art — know­ing that they are leav­ing a lega­cy and al­so open­ing a path to a pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer in the lit­er­ary arts,” added Haz­ard.

Copies of the Chil­dren’s Car­a­van Sto­ry and Col­or­ing books will be pre­sent­ed to the oth­er writ­ers na­tion­wide. The book is avail­able for pur­chase at Pa­per Based Book­shop, 14 Al­cazar Street, for $100. Pro­ceeds from the sale of the book will sup­port Bo­cas’ year-round pro­gramme for chil­dren.